Nocturne

by Louise Cooper

Yes. I tried to tell you before, but—

  I’m sorry. I should have trusted your instinct. In all this time, Indigo thought, she should at least have learned that lesson. Grimya, what time of day does your instinct tell you it should be now?

  Mid-morning, the wolf said.

  Mid-morning. In Bruhome the market should be in full swing; in the lea the encamped travelers should be lighting fires in readiness for their midday meal. Indigo got to her feet and stumbled to the caravan door, peering out. There was movement by some of the other encampments, and the faint sound of voices; but none of the busy activity of daylight.

  Some others are awake, Grimya told her. But they ‘re confused; they don’t yet know what has happened. She glanced at her friend in trepidation. When they realize the truth, there will be panic.

  Somewhere down by the river a horse whinnied piercingly, and the sound broke Indigo’s paralysis. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at the sleeping Brabazon girls, then eased the lower half of the door open.

  Come on, she said. We’d best go and see what we can find out.

  With Grimya at her heels, she went quietly down the caravan steps. As they started across the grass a shadow moved in the first van, then a voice, low-pitched, hissed Indigo’s name.

  “Stead.” She stopped as he emerged from the van and came towards her.

  “Lass, what’s the hour?” Stead tried to sound casual, but his expression, and a slight tremor in his voice, gave him away. There was no point in making a pretence, and Indigo said, “I don’t know, Stead; not for certain. But—”

  He finished the sentence for her. “But the sun should have risen by now. Shouldn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I think it should.”

  “By the Great Mother, Indigo, what’s happening in this forsaken place?” He grasped her arm, hurting her in his agitation. “What’s happening?”

  She was saved from attempting to reply by a new voice hailing them from the direction of the river. A thin young man, with a woman and two small children doggedly following in his wake, was hastening towards them.

  “Steadfast! There’s something wrong, terribly wrong!”

  “The daylight,” the woman said fearfully, and one of the children, moved to copy her, started to howl. “Where’s the daylight?”

  Others, alerted by the voices, were looking up, starting towards them. From the boys’ caravan came a querulous complaint, then Forth appeared at the top of the steps with Rance behind him. “Da? What’s going on?”

  Stead glanced at him. “Best come out here, lad. Wake the others, and send someone to fetch the girls.”

  The babble was swelling as more people arrived, drawn by the primitive instinct to congregate together in a time of uncertainty or danger. Some had already realized the truth but were too afraid to admit it; others, still more fearful, rejected it and clamored for a saner explanation. Voices were becoming more strident, arguments more emphatic, and Indigo knew that before long rationality and control would break down and give way, as Grimya had predicted, to panic.

  Suddenly one harsh voice cut through the hubbub. Heads turned, and Indigo saw the young man who had approached Stead a few minutes earlier. His wife was clinging to him, her face hidden against his chest, while the two children, both now grizzling loudly, hung on to the hem of his shirt.

  “It’s all talk!” the young man shouted, and Indigo heard the unmistakable timbre of rising hysteria in his voice. “What good’s talk! The Mother alone knows what could be creeping up on us while we all stand here clacking like a flock of chickens! We’ve got to get out of this place, get away, before something worse happens!”

  Everyone stared at him. The young man looked wildly from one to another to another.

  “We’ve heard the stories of what’s been happening in this town,” he shouted. “Sickness, blight, people disappearing—and now this! I tell you, Bruhome’s cursed! This isn’t the Mother’s doing; it’s sorcery! And if we don’t make a run for it, we’re all going to be caught up in whatever comes next!” Suddenly he grabbed the children’s hands, pulling them and his wife back out of the crowd. “All right—all right, you stay and wait for it if you’re too stupid not to! But we’re going!” And he turned and pelted away towards his ramshackle wagon.

  Murmuring started, swelled to a crescendo. Another man broke away and ran off across the meadow; then two more. A woman with a bandaged ankle—an acrobat who’d taken a fall on the rickety Revels stage—limped up from the river, calling for someone named Kindo to come away, come away now. The gathering began to collapse into chaos, and within minutes the first wagon, with the thin young man in the driving seat and lashing the horse with a length of rope, came lumbering towards the meadow gateway, careless of anyone who might be in its path. Children scattered, screaming; the wagon rocked perilously in a rut, collided with the gate, splintering one of its uprights, and rumbled away along the road. Moments later a string of rawboned horses stampeded out of the meadow, barely under the control of the rider who sat the leading animal and cursed them volubly. Several families were hastily packing; one small group simply gathered up everything they could carry and left on foot.

  “Da.” Forth turned to Stead, grasping his arm and shaking him to bring him out of the paralysis that seemed to have fallen on him. “What about us? What are we going to do?”

  A shudder ran through Stead and his blank look cleared. He glanced about him, saw that all his children had now emerged from the caravans and were waiting, wide-eyed, for his guidance.

  “Whatever we do,” he said, “I’ll have no panicking. Is that understood? Sorcery or not, we’ve got to keep clear heads. Forth, Cour—I want you to saddle two ponies and ride ahead of us. We’ll move out, but cautiously. That young sprig might have been a coward and a fool, but he was right in one thing—we don’t know what might be out there waiting for us. And we don’t know how far the dark extends.”

  “Stead.” Indigo alerted him suddenly. “Over there—look. Lanterns.”

  They all turned. Lights were approaching from the direction of the town, bobbing like a string of agitated glowworms in the darkness. As they drew nearer, metal glinted in their reflected glow, and the silhouettes of some ten or a dozen men became visible.

  “It’s the town watch.” Relief colored Stead’s voice. “Maybe they’ll have news.”

  “Steadfast Brabazon? Stead, is that you?” The voice of Burgher Mischyn called out of the gloom, and Stead stepped forward, raising a hand.

  “Mischyn! Over here!”

  “By the Mother, I’m thankful to see you safe!” Mischyn was breathless, and in the unsteady lamplight his face looked haggard. “There’s near-complete panic in the town; we didn’t know how the encampment fared; we feared—”

  “Half of ’em have left already.” Stead nodded over his shoulder.

  “Left? But—”

  “Burgher Mischyn!” Someone else had seen the new arrivals, and frantic voices burst out.

  “The watch! It’s the watch!”

  “Help us!”

  “Burgher, what’s happening to us?”

  The dispersed throng began hastily to gather again, though their numbers were considerably fewer than before. The sight of a known figure of authority, with ten armed men of the watch to back him, boosted their confidence and their courage, and they crowded round Mischyn, shouting questions, demanding answers.

  “My friends!” At last Mischyn managed to make himself heard over the commotion, and the crowd gradually subsided as he waved his arms for quiet. “Please, listen to me! I can’t answer your questions, for I have no answers. I know only what you know—that the sun, which according to all our timepieces should have risen six hours ago, has not done so.”

  There was a fresh outburst.

  “Six hours?”

  “It must be almost noon—Great Mother, what’s happening?”

  “Sorcery—someone said it’s sorcery—”

  “QUIET!” Stead bellowed. His voice
, like a bullroarer and far more powerful than Mischyn’s, brought a stunned silence, and he glared at the assembly. “Damn you all, let the man speak!”

  “Thank you,” Mischyn said pallidly. “My friends, I’ve come here to appeal to you for calm. There has been panic in the town, but our militia are doing everything possible to restore order. If we are to face what has come upon us and find a way to deal with it, we must keep our reason. There’s to be a meeting in the Brewmasters’ Hall in one hour’s time—I ask you to attend, and to join with us in finding a solution to this grave situation.“

  From the back of a crowd came a voice quavering with fear. “Damn your meeting! What good’s that going to do? If you don’t know what’s afoot, then I’m not staying here a moment longer!”

  There were shouts of agreement: Mischyn tried to say something over the sudden uproar, but his voice was inaudible and he turned in appeal to Stead.

  “Stead, they don’t understand! None of you understands; but it’s what I’ve come here to tell you. You can’t leave.”

  Stead’s look darkened, as though he suspected some threat. “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I say—you can’t leave Bruhome. No one can. We’ve tried every direction—the roads, the fell paths, everything. Riders, runners; they’ve been going out since an hour after the dawn should have broken, and every one’s come back with the same report.” And, seeing that Stead still didn’t fully comprehend, Mischyn added, his voice close to breaking, “Stead, it’s the forest. The black forest. It’s all around us, and we can’t get out!”

  •CHAPTER•VI•

  The burghers had tried their best, but the meeting was doomed to failure from the start. Entering Bruhome’s main square with the Brabazons—all but Honesty and Gentility, who had stayed behind to watch over Chari—Indigo immediately felt the perilous instability that lurked beneath the prevailing tension like an ember under a power-keg. One touch, one misplaced word or action, and the town could flare into riot.

  The square looked eerie. The blackness overhead was intense, the dark reaching down like a shroud, dense and stifling and unnatural. Flamboys burned on every post, lanterns had been strung all over the square and wedged into every available cranny, but their flaring light seemed to give little real illumination, and the overwhelming impression, as the frightened crowds milled and jostled, was of a scene from some feverish nightmare.

  Indigo slipped an arm round Piety, who was clinging tightly to her waist. For a fleeting moment she wished that they’d listened after all to the dissenter in the meadow, and at least tried to get away from the town; but the impulse died immediately. She knew the truth; perhaps she’d even known it before Burgher Mischyn’s revelation. Something demonic had come to Bruhome. The third evil of seven. There could be no doubt of it now, no room for question. But if this was the third evil, what was its nature? The question sent a cold shaft of fear through her, for it seemed that this demonic power had no nucleus, nothing that she could identify and challenge. The blight, the sickness, the disappearances, even the coming of this malevolent and unnatural night, had no apparent connection. There was evil, great evil here; but unless the vital key could be found, she and Grimya were trapped as effectively and as helplessly as the townsfolk.

  On a balcony that overhung the square from the imposing frontage of the Brewmasters’ Hall, someone had begun to speak. Looking up, Indigo saw Burgher Mischyn flanked by two of his fellow officials; he was trying to address the throng, but at sight of him the crowd had surged forward and started to shout, pleading and haranguing by turns. A horn blew deafeningly as the militia tried to establish some form of order, but it was hopeless. The hubbub was rising, fear feeding on fear; a flamboy crashed down as the press of the crowd proved too much for its tall post, and there were screams and howls of pain before a group of men with more presence of mind than most stamped the flames out. Over the racket Indigo could hear the occasional despairing plea of “My friends—my friends—” from Mischyn, but the throng was deaf to his entreaties. Two lines of militiamen began to move forward from the hall’s main entrance in a valiant attempt to push the jostling horde back, but the gesture, though well-intentioned, only made matters worse. The tide of panic was running out of control.

  Suddenly a shriek seared through the darkness, and a small group on the crowd’s furthest edge began to shout in earnest. Indigo had time to register the nature of the shouts—horror, shock, disbelief—before more took up the cry, spreading it like a wave through the throng.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” Esty, at Indigo’s elbow, jumped up and down in a vain effort to see over the ocean of bobbing heads.

  “I don’t know!” Indigo had to shout in her turn to make herself heard. “Something on the southern side—”

  Behind her, light spilled on to the cobbles as a door opened. She turned her head reflexively and saw someone emerge from one of three narrow houses wedged between a tavern and a bakery; for a moment, registering nothing untoward, she started to turn back to watch the disturbance again—

  Then froze, as her mind caught up with what her eyes had told her.

  The woman emerging from the house was barefoot and dressed only in a long nightgown, and her skin was the sickly white of a dead fish. She stared ahead, unseeing, and her mouth was curved in a beatific but mindless smile. Those closest to her drew back in shock; someone choked off an oath—and the woman hesitated only a moment before turning and walking with an awful air of purpose away into one of the side streets.

  “Indigo!” Esty hissed, horrified, in her ear. “Did you—”

  “I saw it.” Indigo’s heart was pounding; beside her Grimya bristled with alarm and she reached down to grip the she-wolf’s ruff.

  “Save us, there’s another!” Esty cried, pointing. “Over there: look, look!”

  A child, naked, with the same ghastly pallor, was moving along the edge of the square, oblivious to everything but his own progress. No one tried to stop him; as with the woman they drew back, too stunned to react. And from the bakery next to the narrow houses came another, an old man incongruous in nightshirt and cap, white-faced, blind-eyed, smiling.

  One by one, under the paralyzed gazes of the townsfolk, the men, women and children who had fallen prey to Bruhome’s mysterious sickness were emerging from their homes. Gradually the uproar in the square sank to a horrified silence as more and more people realized what was afoot, but still no one moved to intercept the sleepwalkers or try to stop them. Shock had rooted them where they stood: their overburdened minds slammed their shutters, unable to accept this new assault, and they stood staring, helpless, incapable of any rational response.

  Then suddenly a hoarse voice from the balcony broke the thrall, as Burgher Mischyn cried out: “Frenni! No! Not my little Frenni!” He spun round, racing back through the balcony’s open doors, and as he pelted down the stairs towards the main door, Indigo heard him calling to his son. “Frenni, no! Come back!”

  Mischyn’s son … suddenly a terrible thought slipped into place and she whirled, clutching at Stead’s arm.

  “Stead! What about Chari?”

  Stead looked at her as though he’d never seen her before. His face was empty, uncomprehending, but Forth and Esty had overheard, and took their father by the shoulders, shaking him.

  “Da! Da, Indigo’s right!”

  “Da, the sleepers! They’re waking—Chart’s in danger!”

  Like a man lurching abruptly from a dark dream, intelligence returned to Stead’s eyes as their entreaties penetrated his stunned mind. He drew breath with a terrible sound. “Chari—my Chari … oh, by the Mother!” And he swung round, barreling through the crowd.

  “Esty—Indigo—bring the little ones! We’ve got to get back to the meadow!” Forth was already off in pursuit of his father. Indigo and Esty exchanged one appalled look, then Esty began to shrill out the children’s names, calling them to her.

  “Hold hands! Quickly, quickly! Come on!”

  I
n a chaotic scramble they set off, treading on toes, elbowing stomachs, fighting their way through the crush. By the time they reached the edge of the square, Stead and Forth were out of sight, but the crowd had eased. In the distance Indigo thought she glimpsed a pale shape in a narrow street, walking…

  She began to run.

  “Honi?”

  Honesty looked up at her younger sister. Gentility was sitting cross-legged in a corner, frowning as she obsessively pulled threads from the hem of her own skirt.

  “What is it? Stop doing that, Gen; you’ll ruin it.”

  Gen’s eyes were lambent in the dimly-lit van. For a moment her lower lip trembled; then she said, “Honi, I’m scared.”

  Honi sighed. “We’re all scared, kitling. Except maybe Da, and even he—”

  “I don’t mean that. Not the dark. I mean, yes, I’m scared of that, but…” She cast a nervous glance to the pallet and its silent occupant. “I think I’m even scareder of Chari. The way she just lies there, as if she was…” She stopped, unable to bring herself to say the word dead.

  Honi sympathised. She too had been feeling uneasy since the others departed for the town, leaving the two of them to guard their sister; but from the heights of her thirteen years she was determined not to admit it, least of all to Gen, who was only ten and couldn’t possibly understand adult responsibilities.

  She said, “Do you want you to go to the other van?”

  Gen shook her head. “Not if it means being on my own. That’s even worse.”

  “Well…” Honi looked out of the half-open door. “Tell you what, let’s go outside for a few minutes. We can take a lantern, and it wouldn’t hurt to look at the animals, anyway.”

  Gen accepted the idea gratefully, and they padded down the caravan steps. Honi allowed Gen to carry the lantern, and by its lurching glow they checked the ponies and oxen. All seemed well—Honi refilled their water-buckets at the river, but that was all—and at last they turned, neither willing to admit to her reluctance, and retraced their steps back towards the van.

  Suddenly, Gen stopped. “Honi…”